Disney produces a goofy lightweight Mack
Sennett-like
family comedy
fantasy film that's joyfully directed by Robert
Stevenson ("Mary
Poppins");
it's written by Bill Walsh from a story by Samuel W.
Taylor. It was
nominated
for three Oscars: Best Cinematography
(Black-and-White), Best Art
Direction,
and Best Special Effects. How it lost in Special
Effects to The Guns of
Navarone is a real puzzler.

Fred MacMurray plays Professor Ned Brainard, an
absent
minded zany
chemistry professor at the small-town Medfield
College, who forgets
twice
to attend his own wedding, leaving pretty college
secretary Betsy
Carlisle
(Nancy Olson) standing at the altar. The third time he
misses it
because
he blows up his lab in a failed experiment that
accidentally allows him
to
discover a rubbery substance with the elusive quality
of anti-gravity,
which
he calls Flubber (flying rubber). He finds novel ways
to use it; such
as
in the heel of his college basketball team's sneakers,
which enables
them
to leap higher than their rivals and to come from
behind at halftime
and
beat the taller Rutland College, and inside the motor
of his Model-T,
which
enables the car to fly.

The prof plans to let the government in on his
secret to
help them
out, but he's waylaid by unscrupulous loan shark
businessman Alonzo P.
Hawk (Keenan Wynn), an oily alumnus of Medfield, who
plans to call in
his
loan to the struggling college and thereby force it to
close down. He
then
plans to put up in its place a real estate development
that should be a
windfall for him. But Hawk sees the potential for
great profits in
Ned's
invention and when the prof fails to go along with his
greedy plans to
blackmail the government to make a killing, he steals
the Model-T
before
the military bigwigs can see it in action. The prof
also tries to save
the college from financial ruin with his Flubber
discovery and win back
his irate fiancée Betsy, who is now dating the
self-important
English
professor at Rutland College named Shelby Ashton
(Elliott Reid).

In the end the prof takes back the special car,
leaves Hawk
jumping
aimlessly around while "flubberized,"and takes Betsy
and his shaggy dog
Charlie to Washington, D.C. in his flying car. The
flying car gets by
the
Pentagon's elaborate defense security system and lands
on the White
House
lawn, whereby the President greets him as a national
hero; he thereby
saves
his school and marries Betsy while in flight in his
jalopy.

Due to its success, it was a much imitated formulaic
film.
But no
other film in the series is nearly as good.